Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 1.djvu/52

 poetically embellished facts, there can be no question about its interest, since it shows the kind of hero that subsequent generations were disposed to picture as the founder of the sacred dynasty, the chief of the Japanese race. The youngest of four sons, he was nevertheless selected by his "divine" father to succeed to the rulership of the little colony of immigrants then settled in Kiushiu, and his elder brothers obediently recognised this right of choice. He was not then called "Jimmu": that is his posthumous name. Sanu, or Hiko Hohodemi, was his appellation, and he is represented in the light of a kind of viking. Learning of Yamato and its rulers from a traveller who visited Kiushiu, he embarked all his available forces in war-vessels and set out upon a tour of aggression. Creeping along the eastern shore of Kiushiu, and finally entering the Inland Sea, the adventurers fought their way from point to point, landing sometimes to do battle with native tribes, sometimes to construct new war-junks, until, after fifteen years of fighting and wandering, they finally emerged from the northern end of the Inland Sea, and established themselves in Yamato, destined to be thenceforth the Imperial province of Japan. In this long series of campaigns the chieftain lost his three brothers: one fell in fight; two threw themselves into the sea to calm a tempest that threatened to destroy the flotilla. Such are the deaths that Japanese in all ages have regarded as